Crowd Chant

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Robin: Make fun of the Great White North all you want, but Canada is the greatest country in the world. Barney: Great... Social experiment. Barney: [Chants] U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! Rest of the Bar: [Joining in] U-S-A! U-S-A! Robin: What does that even prove? They'll chant at anything. Ca-na-da! Ca-na-da! Rest of the Bar: ... Robin: Ca-na... all right, so they won't chant at anything. Barney: [Chants] Shrimp fried rice! Shrimp fried rice! [rest of the bar joins in] Ted: [Coming in] Shrimp fried rice, totally!

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If there comes a time in a work when the author wants to convey that the community has come together to celebrate an achievement or themselves as a society; or maybe you want to let the audience know the entire crowd backs up a competitor. That is when you'll see the crowd all chant the same word or phrase together over and over again.

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Examples:

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Asian Animation

At the beginning of Season 7 episode 21 of Happy Heroes, Miss Peach introduces someone named Mr. Success for a TV show. Mr. Success, upon entering the stage, is met with a chant "Succ-ess! Succ-ess!" from the crowd.

In "Jalebi's Birthday", after Samosa gives Jalebi the microphone to his jukebox so that she can say something to everyone attending her birthday party, the crowd of attendees cheers her on, chanting "Ja-le-bi! Ja-le-bi!"

In "Pimple Samosa", the audience at the TV studio chant "Sa-mo-sa! Sa-mo-sa!" after Samosa stands up for his talking pimple, Peter, and decides not to use the pimple cream the studio is testing out, also inadvertently revealing the talk show's host is wearing a wig in the process.

Fan Fiction

Being a pro wrestling story, A Ring of Their Own has several.

When Molly Holly squashed Lacey Von Erich in 7 seconds (a new record in-story for shortest match), the audience chanted "Seven Seconds!" at Lacey, prompting her to break down crying.

When Jim Cornette told the audience that he turned down 83-year-old Mae Young's request to join the FWF, part of the crowd chanted "We Want Mae!"

When Ivory returned to the broadcast booth after being out following being injured in a match against Michelle McCool, the audience stood, applauded and chanted, "You're Still Here!"

At the end of the story when Victoria announced her retirement, the crowd chanted "Please Don't Go!", much like they did in real life when Victoria left WWE.

The Lost Boys chanted together "Ru-Fi-O" during a fight between Rufio and Peter Pan to show their support for fellow Lost Boy Rufio. This then gets reversed on Rufio when Peter is able to win over the Lost Boys and they start chanting his name instead. Rufio attempts to counter with his own name but gets drowned out.

For the titularvillain, chanted by his entire crew: "HOOK! HOOK! Show us the Hook! HOOK! HOOK! Give us the Hook!"

Hook tries to set up a chant for Jack during his compensatory baseball game. Hook's pirates mix things up and start chanting "RUN HOME, JACK!" This proved costly for hook, as it stirs Jack's thoughts of home and his sister. Smee has the pirates switch places, and the pirates start chanting HOME RUN, JACK!" There are also a couple of chants of Two, four, six, eight! Who do we appreciate?", both after that game and after the game Jack's team loses at the beginning of the film.

In The Big Green, Jay Huffer, the divorced coach of the Knights,takes advantage of being in the championship game by getting big green coach Anna Montgomery to agree to kiss him if the Knights win as part of a water. However, the Knights lose, and Jay has to hold up his end of the deal and kiss The Big Green's mascot: a goat. Led by the boys, The Big Green players chant "KISS THE GOAT!" until Jay and Ernie's lips meet.

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Dave Barry had a column here he talked about a researcher who noticed that where getting a relatively small group of people to sing in tune and in rhythm is usually difficult, vast crowds at sporting events all chant the same notes in harmony.

Live-Action TV

Stephen Colbert often leads his audience in chants of "U.S.A!" or "I was right!" in this rhythm. and of course the show usually starts with enthusiastic chants of "Ste-phen!"

Jerry Springer always opens with the audience chanting "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!" note except for the times Steve Wilkos stepped in to host for Jerry and the crowd chanted for him

The audience of Whose Line Is It Anyway? shouted "Jer-ry" when he appeared on the show. They'll often take the role of the cheering audience when the cast gives them cues.

How I Met Your Mother: Barney proves to Robin that the United States is better than Canada by starting a "USA" chant in the bar. Robin tries to do it with Canada and gets blank stares.

In the audition rounds of America's Got Talent, the crowd will tell the judges to send fantastic acts to the Las Vegas rounds by chanting "Ve-gas! Ve-gas!" Horrible acts, on the other hand, just get booed.

Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger features the crowd chanting along with the transformation sound of Gigant Bragi-Oh ("GII-GAN-TO GIGANTO!"), which helps break the curse that had weakened the Kyoryugers' powers, and later doing the same for the first appearance of Gigant Kyoryuzin.

After The 100 first land on Earth, they chant "Whatever the hell we want!" to celebrate their new found freedom from the oppressive Ark.

When Murphy gets lynched, the 100 want Bellamy to be the one to finish him off, chanting, "Bellamy! Bellamy!"

Prior to the assault on Mount Weather, the entire Grounder/Sky People army chants "Jus Drein Jus Daun!" (In the Grounder's language, it means "Blood Must Have Blood".)

M*A*S*H has this in the episode "Adam's Ribs". After yet another day of getting liver and fish for lunch, Hawkeye loses it, stands up, and begins ranting about how he's tired of eating it before starting to bang a tray on a pillar and scream "WE WANT SOMETHING ELSE!" He's joined by the entire rest of the mess tent.

Professional Wrestling

As to be expected, this has always been an integral part of pro wrestling. It wouldn't be surprising if something along the lines of "Go Johnny Go" was omnipresent during the very first match.

The Rock was a master of crowd participation in his promos, the fans hanging on to every one of his catchphrases when he talked. The most common were his opener: "Finally, The Rock HAS COME BACK to (town/city the show is in)!" and his closer: "IF YOU SMELLLLLLLLL WHAT THE ROCK! IS! COOKING!"

Back in the 80s, fans used to chant "Faggot" at Jim Cornette, manager and presumed butt buddy of The Midnight Express. This stopped in the 90s when fans began to associate Cornette more with Dairy Queen, though Cornette's spiritual successor, Fabulous Frank, continued to get chants of "Frank Is Gay" at Future Of Wrestling events.

In addition to crowd song like "Taz is gonna kill you!", ECW popularized several other once signature chants at other shows:

Chanting the name of the promotion: "E-C-DUB! E-C-DUB!"

Upon a particularly awesome moment: "HO-LY SHIT! HO-LY SHIT!" This one has even shown up among audiences of promotions or live events where virtually no English is spoken otherwise.

When cheering a particularly badass wrestler: "He's/she's hardcore!"

"She's Got Herpes!" or "She's A Crack Whore", usually chanted at Francine.

"Show Your Tits!" started after a power outage when Paul Heyman sent Kimona Wanalaya out to distract the audience with a strip tease. She refused because there were (inexplicably) children in the audience, and ended up taking a leave of absence due to the booing she got for not complying.

When jeering a WWE-style power wrestler without much talent: "YOU CAN'T WRESTLE!" If said wrestler does have some talent and tries to prove them wrong: "SAME OLD SHIT!" and if they do something different in response to this: "YOU STILL SUCK!"

Following the Falls Count Anywhere nature of ECW: "CAN'T SEE SHIT! CAN'T SEE SHIT!"

When a match has elevated to a certain level of awesomeness, expect fans to serenade the current in-ring competitors with a well-deserved "THIS IS AWESOME!" chant. Jim Ross in fact brought this one up when describing "an ECW crowd" but the chant has since become more associated with WWE fans, who have picked this one up more than the others.

CHIKARA fans, being from the same mold as ECW fans, bowdlerize many of the above chants. ("HOLY POOP!" "YOU SCREWED UP!")

In an ironic case, Championship Wrestling From Florida had made a declaration "This Is Wrestling" back in the 1980s when the WWF coined the phrase "Sports Entertainment". After its folding, CWF, which was also interchangeably called FCW (Florida Championship Wrestling), would see a couple attempted revivals, one of the most prominent being by WWE, who by then was "just WWE INC" instead of "World Wrestling Entertainment" making the declaration, which by now had become a crowd chant in Ring Of Honor, all the more appropriate. And when Low Ki and Bryan Danielson showed up in WWE's FCW and wrestled what critics would call a "clinic", guess what was chanted?

In Mexican and Puerto Rican promotions, such as CMLL and The World Wrestling League, the chant is instead "Esto es lucha!"

Fans at Toryumon events started chanting "H-A-G-E" at Genki Horiguchi when his hairline started receding. It became so integral to him that promoting his HAGE, or bald head, became one of the top priorities when Dragon Gate was considering coming to the US.

The dueling chants of "LET'S GO, [WRESTLER]!"/"[WRESTLER] SUCKS!". Most commonly directed at John Cena, who has turned it into an Ascended Meme, though it has happened to other wrestlers such as William Regal.

I want all the ladies and kids to chant "Let's go, Cena!", and all the dudes over 20 to chant "Cena sucks!"

When someone comes back from a long hiatus to wrestle, there are usually chants of "YOU STILL GOT IT" once they bust out a few maneuvers.

During Vince McMahon's Boss character during the Attitude Era, fans were chanting "ASSHOLE! ASSHOLE!" every time he spoke.

Starting in early 2002, whenever Kurt Angle came out to the ring, the fans would chant "You Suck!" at him at very specific points in his entrance music. This didn't change during any of his face runs, and it lasted until the end of his WWE career in 2006. Needless to say, his return to WWE in 2017, 11 years later, brought the chant right back, not like he's complaining.

When Brock Lesnar tapped out to Kurt Angle at SummerSlam 2003, fans chanted "YOU TAPPED OUT! YOU TAPPED OUT!" This has become a staple to chant against heels who recently lost by submission.

One time, to protest a truly awful matchnote Specifically during a match between a Rosie O'Donnell impersonator and a Donald Trump impersonated by developmental wrestler Chris "Ace Steel" Guy., fans started chanting "T-N-A!T-N-A!", which seemed to shock Vince McMahon. There have been bad matches before, and there will be again, but nothing has ever been bad enough to get a WWE crowd to chant for TNA.

On the April 8, 2019 edition of Raw, the crowd was treated to a bait-and-switch when a run-in by The Bar cut short a heavily-hyped match between Kofi Kingston and Seth Rollins in which Kingston's WWE Championship (Raw) and Rollins' Universal Championship (SmackDown) were on the line. Rollins then said that he and Kingston could fight another time, as he wanted Kingston to team with him to take on The Bar. The fans responded by chanting "A-E-W! A-E-W!"

The fans broke out the "A-E-W!" chants again that October at the Hell in a Cell event after Rollins was disqualified for using a sledgehammer in a Hell in a Cell match against Bray Wyatt for Rollins' Universal Championship. Keep in mind that HIAC matches are notoriously brutal and are normally no-DQ.

Saying "What?" any time someone speaking takes a pause for dramatic effect, to catch their breath, or even because basic grammar demands it. Started by Stone Cold Steve Austin, frequently directed at Kurt Angle.

To that same effect, the "YES! YES! YES!" chants popularized by Daniel Bryan also means that something amazing is about to take place, has happened already, or the character(s) have accepted an offer in response to the storyline.

Similar to the "YES!" chant, if the crowd wants to decline the offer, the crowd will respond with "NO!" Examples include a wrestler potentially turning heel or about to quit, and the crowd respond with a loud "NO!"

"[move name] CITY!" whenever a wrestler uses a move repeatedly. Popularized by Brock Lesnar when he called out "Suplex city, bitch!" during his match against Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania where he used a ton of suplexes against him to attempt to wear him down.

"You deserve it!" after a crowd favorite has won a title (or appears to be about to), or when a heel is humiliated.

"Please Don't Come Back!" typically directed at new comers who don't wrestle well but sometimes even at established talents the ROH bots are predisposed to dislike for various reasons. Of course, they are likely to chant "Please Come Back!" if someone impresses.

"Please Don't Die!" in witness of excessive violence or high spots, most famously chanted at Paul London.

"BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!", which is usually directed at a referee after making a controversial call, or "ASSHOLE! ASSHOLE!", typically directed at an obnoxious opposing fan.

Or their own fans if something truly devastating happens.

New York Rangers fans used to chant "Potvin sucks!" to jeer Denis Potvin, who played for the Islanders.

They still will, even in games not involving the Islanders and despite discouragement from team management - MSG no longer plays "Let's Go Band" because a bunch of fans will always follow it up with "Potvin sucks!" (It doesn't stop fans in the crowd from whistling the songonce or twice a game, prompting anyway).

The official unofficial crowd chant of the United States of America in any sporting event whatsoever is "U-S-A! U-S-A!" which got its start during the 1980 Olympics (and the Miracle on Ice in particular) and has since spread so that it can possibly come up during any international competition, but still is most often heard during the Olympics.

The original USA Dream Team made up of professional basketballers were showered with this during their dominance at 1992 Barcelona games.

When the second suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombing was arrested, it happened again.

It happened yet again when Team Liquid (The United States) beat LGD (China) at The International, the world championships of Dota 2.

During the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, local crowds took every chance to chant "CHI-NA! CHI-NA!" in English.

Many college teams, especially those with long histories of success, develop their own chants as a way of cultivating school spirit.

In the case of the Florida State University Seminoles, their Tomahawk chop and war cry chant got passed on to the pros via the Atlanta Braves. It's a somewhat stereotypical portrayal of Native American tribes, though at least in FSU's case they have been supported by the Seminole Tribes of Florida (the much larger tribes in Oklahoma are more ambivalent, but for the time being they're not actively opposed).

In 1998, a student at the Naval Academy Preparatory School, the official prep school for the US Naval Academy, created a chant for his platoon"I believe that we will win!" The next year, said student was in the Academy proper, and taught it to a Navy cheerleader, who led the 4,000-strong Brigade of Midshipmen at the annual ArmyNavy football game. It's been a standard rallying cry for Navy sports ever since, and thanks to the ArmyNavy Game being nationally televised, it has since spread to several other colleges, and most notably got picked up by fans of the US men's national soccer team (see below).

Football crowds often do this, but their chants are less like chants and more like songs. For instance, Liverpool are famous for singing "You'll Never Walk Alone", and West Ham United are known for singing "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles". International games feature national anthems sung by the masses.

This being said, the United States mixes a little of both varieties in both their domestic league and their international games, where they chant such things as the aforementioned "I believe that we will win!", and then sing "Oh When The [Team Nickname]s Go Marching In!"

Fans of the Denmark men's national team have chants in their own language, but perhaps their most famous is in English"We are red, we are white, we are Danish Dynamite!"

Australian Cricket crowds chant "You're going home in the back of a divvy van" when someone gets themselves escorted out of the ground by police.

If your college basketball team is being bombarded with "N-I-T!", it means you're probably going to be qualified for the infamous National Invitation Tournament, which consists of 32 teams who failed to reach the NCAA tournament. Being in this tournament (which used to be as prestigious as the NCAA tournament is today, but has since devolved into March Madness filler for ESPN thanks to NCAA Executive Meddling) is a Fate Worse than Death for a lot of teams, but some lower-profile teams don't view it as harshly.

"Thursday Nights, Channel Five!"note Used to insult teams demoted from the UEFA Champions League the 2nd tier UEFA Europa League. In Britain, until 2012-13 (when ITV4 and BT Sport picked it up) they were broadcast by Channel Five. Unfortunately, "Thursday Nights, channel 24" doesn't have the same ring.

During the final weeks of the NHL season, disgruntled Toronto Maple Leafs fans may chant "Let's goBlue Jays!" when the team is doing bad — a practice originating from an infamously lopsided game in 2012. Subverted at the start of the 2015 NHL season when it was actually a show of support for them in the MLB postseason.

Hungarian fans of just about any sport will chant "RIA! RIA! HUNGARIA!" on international sporting events. Another popular one is "HAJRÁ MAGYARORSZÁG, HAJRÁ MAGYAROK!" ("Go Hungary, go Hungarians!")

The arguably most popular Hungarian soccer team, Fradi/FTC has a number of idiosyncratic chants used by their fans, such as "MINDENT BELE! MINDENT BELE!" (roughly "Use everything you have!" or "Play with all you've got!") and "HAJRÁ FRADI!" ("Go Fradi!"). There's also the infamous "LILA MAJMOK! LILA MAJMOK!" ("Purple Monkeys! Purple Monkeys!"), meant to jeer on their longtime rival team, Újpest FC, who play in purple colors.

If the referee punishes their team, Hungarian fans often chant "SZEMÜVEGET A BÍRÓNAK!" ("Give glasses to the referee!").

Playing well in the Super Smash Bros. series may cause the crowd to cheer for you, with a unique chant for each character. In the single player modes of earlier installments, the player gets a bonus for triggering Some even act as Shout Outs relating to the character in question:

Pikachu's cheer is "Pika, Pika, Pikachu!" which is fitting given his explosive popularity when the franchise debuted and his establishing the concept of Pokémon Speak for so many of us.

In Skylanders: Giants, the crowd in the Arena will start chanting your Skylander's name if you do well.

In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the music for Gym Leader battles begins to include chanting as soon as they're down to their last Pokémon; as gym battles in the Galar Region are a major spectator sport, the implication is that the crowds watching your battle are really getting into it.

Webcomics

Domain Tnemrot has numerous cases of the crowd cheering their enthusiasm for someone to deal a deathblow.

In Tamagotchi Video Adventures, Masktchi is given a popsicle by a little girl when a gumball machine he wants to take back to Tamagotchi Planet for the museum breaks. Masktchi proposes that his popsicle stick be the relic to represent Earth in the museum's new room and is met with laughing from the others until Cosmotchi shows them the story behind the girl's generosity, and they start to cheer "Mask-tchi! Mask-tchi!" instead when asked whose Earth object should go in the exhibit.

Other

In 1984, Rev. Jesse Jackson exhorting his Afro-American listeners to run for any public office, led chants of "Run! Run! Run!" When he started his own U.S. presidential campaign, supporters chanted, "Run, Jesse, run!" and "Win, Jesse, win!" In his 1988 campaign, the chant was "Keep hope alive" (which he still uses).

During Barack Obama's U.S. presidential campaign, his supporters would often chant, "Yes We Can!"note Detractors who think centrist Obama was some kind of ultra-left-wing menace would do well to remember that "yes we can" came from conservative Republican Ronald Reagan. Obama himself led chants of "Fired up! Ready to go!" which he'd gotten from NAACP worker Edith Childs at one of his campaign stops.

Later imitated by Donald Trump's supporters, who would chant "Lock her up!" at rallies in reference to Hillary Clinton, who Trump blamed for the attack on an American embassy in Libya that killed the Ambassador to Libya; he accused her of covering up her negligence by deleting thousands of emails that she had in a private server. Today, President Trump's detractors often chant "Lock him up!"

When Shigeru Miyamoto showed up at the Nintendo World Store in the autumn of 2005, from the outdoor crowd below, the chants included "Donk-ey Kong! Donk-ey Kong!", "Mar-i-O! Mar-i-O!" and "You are God! You are God!"

The Runaway GuysThrown Controllers game show has one whenever a contestant ends up picking "The Devil's Deal" panelnote which, if accepted, makes the game award double points but makes "Brutal Question" appear more frequently. "SELL YOUR SOUL!"

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BB - Toilet Bob

In Season 6 "Glued, Where's My Bob?", Teddy shames the crowd for laughing at Bob and he gets them to chant "Toilet Bob" to show their support for Bob, despite his protest.